My Honey is the best! He spent the greater part of this evening helping me rearrange the family room, even though he has to go to work early in the morning. We are actually setting up most of the room as a gym. Hopefully this will be of some use in Tracy and I getting fit. I'm all for that, especially after seeing my pictures lately. I'm sure that if we "exercise" a little faith , it will work even better, right?

I'm also doing something strange... I am going to make use of my crawl space. I'll clue you in when the project is more underway. Stay tuned ;)

Christmas Day 2007

Christmas Day was a load of fun. We spent the whole morning opening and unboxing all of our presents. Taking the toys out of the boxes is always my favorite part. We loved every present we got and felt blessed for having them all. My mother-n-law (mom or NaNa) spent the afternoon/evening with us. We had yummy food and even fit in our traditional Christmas day movie. This year the movie was "National Treasure #2". It had great action and kept us on the edge of our seats the whole time. A must see in my book.

My Boy and his Grandma Sherrie

That's my Boy, towering over his Grandma Sherrie. He is almost five foot eight.

He did it!

He did it! My big brother was the first male in our family and also the first person in our family to graduate from college. That's my Bro! Everyone is so proud of him. I had a blast taking pictures after the event in the reception hall. As a matter of fact everyone had their cameras and cell phones flashing. There are lots of good pictures but these are my favorite ones. I Hope You Enjoy Them! This trip was a quick one but it was quite fun anyways. Paulie's wife Janna had prepared great food and there was never dull a moment. I hated to leave.

My poor Truck

My poor truck, left to collect snow while her driveway partner gets to have all the fun. She can't wait to get new tires, so she can enjoy the snowy streets. I think ol' Taurus is rooting for her.

KiKi with The Tree

So this is it "The Miracle Tree", all lit up and adorned with my home made ornaments. These were taken late at night while KiKi was letting me take her picture. What's neat about my tree this year is that I put whimsical wired glowing stars all over it, so that even when the lights are turned off, the stars still light up the room. It is just beautiful.

The Miracle Tree

This was our first time actually cutting down our own Christmas tree, from the forest.Our hunt to find the perfect Christmas tree was great fun. We found not only the perfect tree, but a "Miracle Tree" . Why you ask, is it a miracle tree? Well it's because this tree had been cut down many years earlier . Being cut off about three feet from the ground, this sweet tree refused to give up. It grew itself a new tree from one of it's lower branches. So that my friend is why it's our Miracle Tree. We just couldn't find a more special tree in the whole forest of trees.

Fun on the go

Fun on the go has been the theme of this week. Other than a little running around we have spent the whole time so far doing things I love, like sleeping in and shopping. We have went out for dinner for Mom's birthday and even fit in a movie, too! We also did a few plumbing side jobs to help get ready for Christmas. Oh and I can't forget we also went to Tracy's two year old nieces birthday party in the middle of all the shopping. My husband is a wonderful cook. He has made plenty of great meals for our family to enjoy, including a feast of a brunch just today. I have loved the time I've spent with my husband, my children, and the rest of our family. We did get a bit of snow to usher in the holiday, a welcomed sight.

A Great day!

Today was a great day! My honey was able to spend most of it with me. We just did a bunch of running around making sure he had everything he needed for his hunting trip. Tracy was invited to go on a road trip to South Dakota with a bunch of guys from his office, including the owner. I was able to meet Bill for the first time when they came to pick him up and I really liked him. This is Tracy's first time going hunting for at least the past sixteen years. I'm sure he's going to have a blast. I can't wait to hear the stories from his trip. He will be missed here, but I'm glad he has this chance to hunt.

This picture wasn't taken by me, it was forwarded in an e-mail by my dad. I thought it was a beautiful depiction of how my day felt.

Veteran's Day

Okay I don't know if you know this but, Colorado Springs is a military city with several basses, the Air Force Academy, and pretty much, you name it, we've got it. You would think that Veterans Day would be a day that would be observed and the children would get off from school. That, as you can tell I'm getting to, is not the case, here in Colorado Springs. I think that there are plenty of people present and past that have given so much for the freedom of our country, I do believe that this day is an honorable holiday. So in protest to this strange neglect, I am exercising my right as a parent, in keeping my children home. I am very proud of the many people that did and continue to do so much for me, my family, and every free American/non-American that gets to enjoy the greatest land on earth, The United States Of America. We are the "Land of the Free and Home of the Brave", because of you. Thank YOU for giving your time or your life so that others can live and for protecting the people I love the most. I Love You My Honey!

Monday- Blaaaaah!

Oh my goodness, Mondays are my immobile days. I don't get anything done and I seem to have a sort of depression looming over me. Why cant I be active on Monday? This might be answered by the fact that I can't seem to go to bed at a good time on Sunday. I'm always fighting to hold on to those weekends. Now if I didn't go to bed until 3:30am and had to get up to get the kids off to school by 6:50am then I wouldn't have to take a nap when I get home. Yesterday's nap was nice and long and I wasn't out of bed until 1:00pm. Being a lump takes a lot out of you so I lounged and watched Breakfast at Tiffany's for the first time, oh and Singin' in the Rain. They were both great ones. I also caught Dancing With The Stars, on TV, something I never watch but I knew if I were patient I would get to see The Bachelor. Man, what a Monday!

... and riffling through the contents of the broken canister I could immediately tell this was definitely trash that the pilot had ejected in order to keep his load light for the trip into space. The strange thing that I now realize is, that they had better have a nice bathroom in that ship, because of the 64oz. Big Gulp cup and snicker bar wrapper I found in it's refuge. The truly sad, sad thing that he had thrown away, was something that would become a blessing for the dream me. This something really got my attention. He accidentally threw out...

Find the rest somewhere else on my blog ;) This is my way of making you feel the suspense of the dream. Confused about what I could be talking about, then go to the last blogs comments and start there. You are on a story scavenger hunt about a dream I had this morning.

Our Halloween Party

I worked hard all week getting the yard and house cleaned up and ready for our annual "After Halloween, Halloween party". It was a great success. We had all of our closest friends and all of Tracy's family there. What a hoot we had eating yummy food and singing to Karaoke. I hope all of my neighbors didn't mind the ruckus blasting out of our open windows. The weather this week has been amazingly warm, and was the reason for the open doors and windows.
Yet the energy of the company
was high, and this made for good times and great memories.Doesn't this look like a fun bunch?This was a day I want to remember, always.

My only wish is that my house were a bit bigger in order to make entertaining easier. There's always the dream of the perfect entertaining home rattling around in my head. I guess that's something else I get to look forward to.

It's been a few days

Halloween was a fun yet an on the go day. I spent the whole afternoon with my mother-n-law whom I affectionately call Mom. She wanted to go to her chiropractor's office in costume and needed me to go with her. I dressed really quickly in my witch's costume and we hit the town. We went all over the place, catching the eyes of all, in our adventure that can only be considered a search for attention. When Mom was on her way home, my son and I headed back to the school to pick something up and I wound up having an aggravating talk with my son's Language Arts teacher, which led me to a much nicer talk with the principal. I wound up being late picking up my daughter from school. When we were finally home I had a call from a sweet young friend from church who was wandering if I could bring the dinner I was going to make for her family, soon. In our church whenever someone in our ward has a baby, they will set-up dinners for a few days. She just had a baby boy and I of all people agreed to bring her dinner on a Holiday. I am the worst person to have make a meal and expect to eat before 6:30. She was hoping I could come then, at 5:00. I rushed as fast as I could and was able to throw together a fine looking meal. She was very grateful for the meal. Sadly though as I was delivering it to her, my children were making their own TV dinners. Next the rush to get my kids ready for trick-or-treating set in . My daughter's friend Shelby wound up going with us and we missed going with my friend Debbie. The highlight of our trick-or-treating was this really neat spook ally a family made in their garage. They had these great Pirate's of the Caribbean costumes and pumpkins. These are a couple of the pictures I took of my kids with them. I must say we were all impressed with their kindness and creativity.

I'm not sure where to begin my report for today's happenings, but I will attempt. I had a really naughty headache this morning and opted to go back to bed with some Advil and an herb tea chaser. I wound up sleeping till after 1:00. The headache was no doubt induced by the Terrible night that my son and I had, trying to do two big projects for school that were due today. He goes to a charter school and they like to PUSH the kids. That brings me to the question, should the teachers be giving our children so much homework every night? My children have such little time to be kids and play. They spend way too much time doing homework and either have not enough or even sometimes, no play time at all (like the last two nights). Don't teachers know that play time and family time are essential?

On a happier note I got my booty out in my back yard and did some sprucing up. That's where I spent what was left of my day and some of the night planting, placing rock, and cleaning. My fence is looking pretty darn good right now and had we not ran out of fence boards this weekend, we would have finished it for sure. My Honey felt sorry for my attempt to do it without him so, with the help of our children, we got it all up together. I put our fire-pit-table together and created a cozy little retreat where some day (soon I hope) we will be able to use our hot tub.

Tomorrow is Halloween which I am only a little bit excited about because my husband will not be able to take the kids out trick-or-treating, like he always does. Thank goodness for good friends who don't mind us tagging along. Were going to meet over at my Bestest Bud Debbie's house and go with her and her boys. I suppose it's not too different than last year with the exception of Tracy not being there. This weekend we plan to have our annual after Halloween, Halloween party. That should be great fun. Ta Ta for now.

My mood has changed from feeling GREAT to this sad lull this morning. I just hate how strongly my daughters teacher is adamant about not letting her get anything past her. She was very upset with her for not showing me her planner this past week. This was especially hard because she told her that if she didn't wright down her homework assignments at the end of each day then she wouldn't be able to do alternate homework. In order to keep her from not having to do anything because there is nothing written down in her homework planner, I make her do five times the work she would otherwise have for homework. I was thinking this was fare since I knew it was harder for her and was in a way a punishment for not being responsible enough to write down the right stuff. The teacher on the other hand thought that Willow was doing it on purpose so that she could do FUN pages instead of the class assignment. The work I made Willow do was work that the teacher had requested I work with her on to help her catch up in class. So what's the deal? And the crazy thing is that this is only the second time that this has happened. The main problem that Willow is having is the fact that she has to leave the classroom for a special reading group and doesn't return back to class until right before the bell rings, which is when all the other students are shuffling around to get out the door. "Gurr", this just makes me so mad. I mean for goodness sakes she is only a third grader.

My Honey who was supposed to be home yesterday, is now finally home. I have missed him so much. Today I found out why Heavenly Father's plan included families set up with a husband, wife, and children too. Life without Tracy was especially hard while I was trying to surprise him by working on putting up part of our fence, with only my twelve year old son to help. If only we had a dollar for every time I said the words "son could you please focus and do what I asked you to do" or " where is your dad when we need him". Actually the latter of the two were the first words out of my daughters mouth when she first saw the project we were undertaking. She had been at school while Storm had the day off and was trying to help me. I'm sure if our neighbors had the thought to record our adventure they could make a lot of money off of our foolishness and the ridiculous attempt we made. From our freak-out over the very large spider that crept out onto the board we were screwing up, to the cross-board we cut a half inch too short but I insisted that we still use because of a shortage of boards. After many, many drops from my boy it wound up being rigged in such a way as to make McGuiver ashamed with us. To top it all off, our friends drill we had borrowed last week for another project, ran out of juice. So we had no choice but to pack it all in. We don't even have much to show for all this "HARD WORK" but, four cross-boards in place and about eight fence boards up. All this in order for my Heavenly Father to humble me and to remind me that no matter how hard I try to do things without my husband's help, I am still a woman and in trying to do such things without him, I will no doubt make a fool of myself and regret my efforts completely. I must say in man's defense, no matter how hard some women try to say, we can do anything without them, they are sorely wrong, as was confirmed today when I found out, it helps to have them around. And if they're not there when you try to do something difficult, you could always blame the mess on them, because after all... they weren't there to help you, when you needed them :)

WoW! I really have no clue what I'm doing here. I suppose I was just a curious little cat... hoping to find out what a blog is and now I think it is a place to post a journal for people I want to keep in touch with. Lets see if this worked : )